Some thoughts on sentimentality

Watching the musical film adaptation of a popular book the other day on TV, I noted an uncomfortable feeling of sentimentality creeping over me during certain numbers. It wasn't true of all the songs, only of those in which the main character - a clearly symbolic figure - was treated as if "real." I mean "real" in the sense that we were made to be seemingly privy to this character's feelings; the songs were intended as sound-pictures of his interior state.

Sentimentality in art has been defined as many things, but after reflection I'm inclined to understand it like this: Something is sentimental when it pretends to convey the actual emotions of a person. And this is always a failure because it is not possible to convey - or to know - the emotions of another person. The artist engaging in sentimentality projects his or her own emotions onto the character in the song (or the poem or the play) and the result is invariably ghastly. An artist can only create authentic feelings from constructions - from assemblies of words, images, harmonies, rhythms, etc. The reader/viewer/auditor experiences feelings that result from the psychological effects of these constructs and the external associations they evoke. But we don't - we can't - feel the feelings of a character as if he or she were "real."

I forget which conductor it was, but somebody with a baton once said, "Mozart is many things, but he is never sentimental." This is true, and it is remarkable, considering the many scenes in Mozart operas where characters find themselves in apparently sentimental frames of mind. The Countess in Marriage of Figaro sings "Dove sono i bei momenti" ("Where are the beautiful moments?") and what we hear is...wistfully rising and falling melody, supported by restless harmonic changes at unexpected points. Is this a presentation of the Countess' feelings? No, it isn't. It's an objective musical experience that suggests feelings of loss and yearning, universal feelings far superior to anything we might get if we managed somehow to plunge into the Countess' psyche (which we can't do, anyway). It is Mozart's musical equivalent of the condition in which the Countess finds herself: abandoned and full of longing. It is her real, experiential situation, not a bag of random, "internal" emotions.

Sentimental artists attempt to personalize, and end up trivializing. Non-sentimental artists universalize, and end up personalizing.